Flight of the Intruder

NINETEEN

Jake Grafton was strapping himself into the cockpit on a cloudless morning when Cowboy Parker ran across the flight deck toward the aircraft. Grafton and Tiger Cole had briefed a strike on a suspected fuel dump wit Little Augie and Big Augie, who were manning the machine next to Grafton’s. They planned to set their target afire with the sixteen RockEyes each plan carried. Boxman and his pilot, Corey Ford, were manning the spare, armed with sixteen Mark 82 500 pounders, which would go only if one of the other bombers had a mechanical problem before launch Grafton watched Parker with a sinking feeling. Not a hurry-up target!

Cowboy climbed the boarding ladder. “You got a new target, Jake. Forget the fuel dump.” Holding up a piece of a chart, he pointed to a crude triangle drawn in pencil. Jake saw it was a North VietNamese airfield.

“What’s there?”

“Migs,” Parker said. “One or two, maybe three. They landed less than two hours ago and the decision’s been made to try to bag them before they sortie again. You have the lead. We’re going to launch the spare so there’ll be three of you. Brief on squadron tactical after you rendezvous.” Cowboy handed him the strip of chart and several aerial recon photos of the airfield. He took one step down the ladder, paused, and looked back at Grafton “This’ll be a tough one. It’s heavily defended.”

“Tell the other guys to meet me at ten grand overhead.”

Cowboy nodded and disappeared down the ladder.

Jake examined the chart with Tiger. “Shit,” Cole muttered. “The son-of-a-bitch is in Laos.” The target airfield lay five or six miles across the Laotian border on the far side of Barthelemy Pass, which the chart showed at 3937 feet above sea level. Jake remembered from the weather brief that low clouds covered the mountains.

How should they approach? If they flew all the way to Hue, then west to Laos and north to the airfield-what was the name?-Nong Het, the trip would be long and the bad guys would have a lot of warning. Fuel would run low only if they elected to return by the same route. If they flew straight in, across North Vietnam, they’d attract flak enroute, but there would be less time for the North VietNamese to prepare a reception at the airfield. If the MiGs were bait to lure the lion, the less warning the better.

Jake Grafton rubbed his chin and stared at the swells on the sea. He thought about the flak and the airfield in the bottom of a valley. Maybe they should go straight in. “What do you think, Tiger? Straight in?”

Yep.

The plane captain signaled for a start. Jake gave the chart and pictures to the bombardier and busied himself with the starting procedure. He was too preoccupied to enjoy the cat shot when it came.

They rendezvoused over the ship at 10,000 feet. When all three planes had joined, Jake took the lead, and Corey Ford flanked him on the left with Little Augie on the right. Jake then used his hand to signal the switch to the squadron tactical frequency and began a gentle climb to altitude.

“Two’s up.” Little’s voice.

“Three’s up.” That was Corey.

“Let’s go covered voice.” All three turned on the scramblers, which encrypted the voice transmission. To a listener without a scrambler with the daily code properly set, the conversation would be merely an incomprehensible buzz.

“Okay, guys. We’re going straight at it. Coast in north of Vinh, find the right valley, get under the clouds, go through the pass, an drop down on that airfield like the angel of doom. Any gripes?”

When all he heard was silence, Jake continued, “The field will no doubt be oriented east and west, up an down the valley.” Cole was looking at the photos an concurred with a thumbs up. “Little, you take the right side of the field, and Corey and I’ll take the left. Put the ordnance just inside the tree lines.

They’ll park those Migs under cover. I’m willing to bet they’ll be in the trees. But if you see them out on the airfield, you know what to do. Okay so far?”

Mikes clicked in response. “As I read this chart, the target will be in a valley that curves around to the left. High mountains on both sides. The mountains on the right peak at more than sixty-two hundred feet. After we drop, Little, you’re on your own.

Just to be safe, I want you to make a right turn off target and get out the best way you can. Corey, you stick with me and we turn left off target. They may try to put a SAM up somebody’s ass as we leave.

Everybody’s to avoid flying into one of those granite clouds. Any questions?” There were none. The flight switched back to the Strike frequency.

“Think we’ll surprise them?” Jake asked Tiger.

The bombardier shook his head.

“Me neither,” Jake grunted. “I have a sneaking suspicion we’re trying to steal the cheese out of a mousetrap.

They had only two practical choices on the method of attack: go in high above the mountains and the cloud tops, or go in low on the deck below the clouds. If RockEyes were released too high, the clamshell opened too soon and the bomblets would disperse so widely that the pattern density was unacceptably low. So they really had no choice at all. Jake thought about these matters as he followed the computer steering for the coast-in point Cole had chosen twenty miles north of Vinh. They would approach the coast from the southeast. He leveled at 20,000 feet and scanned the distant horizon. He could see the land obliquely on his left and the clouds on the mountains that rose beyond the coastal plain.

Jake instructed the other crews to reengage the scramblers. “Devil Three, since you have GP bombs, you may have to pop up high enough for the fuses to arm.” Corey Ford clicked his mike. “Just don’t get so wrapped up in the attack that you hit a ridge.”

“Roger that.”

“After you drop your load, climb over the ridges and beat feet. No rendezvous.”

“I gotcha.”

“Boxman, how’s your radar?” Since Grafton was the leader, he let his concerns show.

“It’s fine, Jake. A sweet system.”

“You may have to S-turn or slow down a little to let me move ahead a bit before you drop.” Corey clicked his mike. Jake wanted to make sure that Corey would delay his release so that Jake, down low, would not be struck by his bombs or caught in their blast. A second or two delay would be enough.

Jake thought of one more point. “This hole’s probably heavily defended. So if anyone takes a hit and goes down, he’s on his own. Don’t stay and watch for chutes or any of that crap. Everybody else haul ass out of there.” Mike clicks were his reply.

They flew on in silence. Jake’s mouth was so dry he took a swig from his water bottle. He offered the bottle to Cole, who took his mask off, tilted the bottle, then passed it back.

Jake eased the nose over and trimmed for a descent. Each crew worked through the combat checklist. Passing 10,000 feet, fifteen miles from the coast, Jake reported to the airborne controller that he was strangling the parrot and secured the IFF. They were on their own.

He checked his wingmen and told them to spread out some more. When each plane was about one hundred feet away he turned his attention to the land ahead. Rice paddies reflected the afternoon sun.

Frank Camparelli and Cowboy Parker huddled over a chart in Mission Planning. The skipper had three aircraft on the way to a well defended target, in daytime, without adequate planning, and the possibilities for disaster ate at him.

“How do you think Grafton will go in?”

“Jake’ll go straight at ‘em, Skipper. He thinks feint and deceptions in a theatre this small just give the enemy more time to alert their defenses “That’s true.” Camparelli went to the flak chart over the wag. Pins bristled around the airfield- “I think they’re waiting for us in that valley. “Maybe so, but they’ve baited the trap with real Migs.” Parker joined Camparelli at the wall chart “The MiGs are there,” he said, thinking of the electronic intelligence report that described Migradar signals as emanating from the Nong Het airfield for the last two hours. “The hard fact is we can afford to trade plane for plane,” Camparelli turned slowly and looked over Cowboy from head to toe. “You’ll make a good admiral someday, Parker.”

Cowboy reddened. “Skipper, I didn’t mean-” I know, I know.”

Camparelli cut him off with a gesture and scanned the charts and tables as he ran his hand over his hair. Six men, three airplanes. Six lives and eighteen million dollars worth of hardware at risk for one or two fifteen-year-old single-seat day fighters that in the air would be mincemeat for Phantoms. “Why don’t you go to Combat and listen in on the Strike frequency.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” Parker left immediately.

The skipper wandered from chart to chart. He stopped at the SAM-threat display and examined it with interest. From the Nong Het airfield his gaze meandered north toward Hanoi. Because Grafton was on his mind he looked at the area around the power plant at Bac Giang.

“Steiger!” The commander strode to the door of the photorecon space.

“Steiger! Where’s Steiger?”

Thirty seconds later a flushed Abe Steiger stood before the SAM-threat chart staring through his glasses at Camparelli’s finger, which tapped imperiously on the black dot on the railroad labeled Bac Giang. -“Why aren’t there SAM sites here? Where are those sites that shot at Grafton the other night?”

The air intelligence officer opened and closed his mouth several times.

“I told you I wanted those sites that shot at Grafton spotted on these charts. I told you specifically to make sure they were in the intelligence report.” The finger pointed. “Get me that report, Mister Steiger. Now. I need-want to see it.”

“The sites aren’t in the reports, sir.” Abe couldn’t lift his eyes. The hand on the table was absolutely still.

“I think you had better come down to my stateroom Mister Steiger, and we’ll have a little chat.”

The intruders crossed the coast at 480 knots at 600 feet, still descending.

“Devil flight, feet dry,” Jake told the HawkEye circling somewhere in the Gulf of Tonkin. He received the usual reply. “Good hunting.”

The cloud base seemed to be at about 2500 feet, but Jake kept descending.

If they were going in low in the daytime, they had better skim the trees to give the gunners the toughest shots. And the lower they were the fewer the people who could see them.

They passed directly over a crossroads village at 100 feet descending.

Flashes in the air revealed flak, so all three planes jinked slightly while holding their formation. When they leveled at 50 feet, just above the trees there was no room left for jinking- All they had was speed. Jake advanced the throttles to the stops, expecting to be told if someone could not keep up. In less than a minute, Corey’s voice came over the radio: “Gimme a couple, Jake.”

Grafton Pulled two percent RPM off the engines and tightened the Erection lock that would prevent him from inadvertently advancing the throttles. He concentrate on the task of threading the machine over the occasional tree lines. The warplanes rushed over acres of rice paddies, a road, shacks, more rice paddies, another road, a tree line, and more paddies. The sensation of speed was sublime.

“We’re in the valley,” Cole told him.

He saw the Powerline almost as he crossed over it missing by inches.

A flock of birds burst from a tree right under his nose- Jake saw them flash beneath and knew the birds would be slammed back into the trees by the down blast from his machine.

Guns on the road ahead. Muzzle flashes. A row of them, like flash bulbs popping. The Intruders rocketed toward the road and in an instant it lay behind.

The valley floor was rising. There were more trees now. The sensation of speed was lessening. Unconsciously he pushed the throttles, then remembered the friction lock and checked that he still had the proper power setting. I’ll die of old age before we get there, he thought.

Within half a minute the walls began closing in and the planes picked their way up the valley. Thick tropical foilage covered the flanks of the hills, whose ridges reached higher and higher until they touched the clouds.

Jake checked the altimeter. They were 1700 feet above sea level.

Back in the States, Jake Grafton had taken great pleasure in flights like this along training routes over stretches of wilderness where the legal altitude was a minimum of 500 feet above the ground. Being young and full of himself, he often flew as low as his nerves allowed just for the sheer hell of it. In those days, when military planes were still permitted to fly under visual flight rules, he would occasionally return to NAS Whidbey Island over the Cascade Range at 200 or 300 feet above the floor of the craggy valleys, shoot through the passes at full throttle and snake his way down between the cliffs, following the streams until they emptied into rivers that flowed into Puget Sound. He had wondered what the hikers had thought of the man-made eagle that split the solitude with a roar, then disappeared as quickly as it had come. Higher authority had finally stopped the illegal flights. Now he was glad he had had the experience.

The valley became serpentine. The altimeter revealed they were climbing rapidly. Not much farther now. “Master arm,” he said over the radio. Cole flipped the switch with his left hand, then fingered the other armament switches to satisfy himself that they were in the correct positions.

Jake saw the end of the valley ahead, a gentle upslope to a ridge not quite touching the clouds. The green forest seemed to caress the undersides of the planes as they shot up the slope.

Through the bombsight glass, Grafton saw the ridge and the flashing guns that lined the treeless summit. Streaks of white-hot artillery shells veined the air.

They can’t miss. They can’t. We’re too close. Jake sensed the white bolts racing straight for the cockpit then, at the last possible instant, veer away and flash to the right or left or over.

They can’t miss. They can’t. We’re too close.

He looked down as he crossed the naked summit Impressed on his brain for as long as he had yet to five was the confused image of flashing guns, men in black loading and firing the weapons, and rising dust clouds He glanced across at Corey Ford and the Boxman and saw that their plane was almost abreast about hundred feet away. A streak of fire ripped aft from it belly. Then the machine exploded.

The fireball was yellow with a white core. it slowed as it expanded and disappeared behind.

Jake and Little Augie swept down into the valley.

“they got Ford,” Little said over the radio.

“There’s the runway,” Cole told him. The narrow valley was fried with the rising streaks from automated weapons. The dust devils created by the hammering guns lined the sides of the runway like sentries from netherworld. Knowing that Little would take the right Jake aimed his plane down the trees on the left side o the runway. He held the plane level and let the ground fall away.

Whump! The Intruder took a sledgehammer blow. The pilot’s eyes flicked to the instrument panel-right RPM unwinding, right exhaust gas temperature climbing. He chopped the throttle on the dying engine to cutoff and began a hard turn to the left to climb the ridge.

Panic and revulsion welled up in him and he thought, Got to get the hell out of here before they get the other engine!

Then from the middle of the tree line halfway down the runway a glint of light on silver caught his eye. A Mig!

What the hell! We’re dead anyway!

Jake flung the plane toward the Mig. As the target reached the bottom of the sight glass, he brought his thumb down on the bomb-release pickle. He felt the small, slow thumps as the RockEyes kicked off the racks, a pair each third of a second.

A stream of white streaks licked across the top of the canopy and smashed into the Intruder’s tail. The needle on the airspeed indicator flipped to zero.

On the west end of the airfield only two lone artillery pieces blasted into the sky.

With the last of the bombs gone, he pulled the plane left and up. He would climb the ridge. One last look over his shoulder at the airfield. A fireball was rising from the trees. “Got one,” he whispered.

The clouds enveloped them. “We should have come in from the west,” he told Cole.

Back over the ocean Jake reported on covered Strike frequency the loss of his wingman to the ship. He told them that if they sent another strike it should come in from the west and get up into the clouds off target. Then he called Little to arrange a rendezvous.

The other A-6 appeared as a white seed floating in a sunbleached sky. The seed sprouted wings and a tail. Soon Jake could distinguish the men in the cockpit. Little Augie brought his plane in alongside until Jake could see each rivet, each streak Of oil, each smudge of dirt.

“You have four or five nice holes in the tail, Jake. Augie slid under and lingered there, then surfaced on the right side. “No holes around the right intake. Can see anything. Maybe something went down the intake?” Something sure as hell had, something launched from a gun barrel. “You have two small holes in the right flap, Jake. And some bad dings in the armor plate over the right engine. Other than that. .

. .”

Jake and Cole examined the other A-6 inch by inch and found only a small hole in the left horizontal stabilizer.

When Jake had the lead again, he dropped his hook then raised it. He tested the gear and flaps. The plane tended to slew right or left as he added or subtracted power, but this was normal for single-engine flight and easily corrected with the rudder. “You look pretty good to me,” Little informed him. Jake raised the gear an dropped the nose to get enough airspeed to raise the flaps The extent of the damage was reported to the ship, and in a few moments the Strike controller Ordered Jake to land aboard rather than divert to Da Nang.

The damaged Intruder was the last jet aboard the ship. Jake flew a straight-in approach without speed brakes. He knew that the most common error on single-engine approaches was a pilot’s reluctance to reduce power on the good engine for fear of entering a descent that the one engine could not break, so he concentrated on reducing power when necessary and on doubling his power additions. He caught the three wire, and Cole said, “Not bad for a single-engine approach.

The wings folded slowly because only one hydraulic pump supplied the pressure. He was directed to the number-two elevator and was immediately lowered to the hangar deck. After taxiing off the elevator into the cavernous bay and waiting for the blue-shirted men of the tie-down crew to install chocks and chains, he opened the canopy and chopped the engine.

A crowd of somber men waited at the foot of the boarding ladder. Grafton took refuge in the familiar tasks-lifting the safety latches on the ejection seat handles, securing the proper switches, and unfastening the lapbelt and parachute riser fittings. When he could put the moment off no longer, he climbed from the cockpit and lowered himself down the ladder.

Cowboy met him. “I’m sorry, shipmate.”

Jake Grafton began to weep. He had not cried since his grandmother had died when he was sixteen. Cowboy and Sammy Lundeen led him to a stairwell off the hangar deck where he sat on the ladder.

Cowboy closed the hatch leading to the hangar bay and lit a cigarette that he passed to Jake. “Have his hands been like that very long?” Jake heard Cowboy ask Sammy.

The raw smoke after two hours on oxygen scoured his lungs. The cigarette burned out when the fire reached the filter. Carefully he put the butt in his left sleeve pocket. “I’m all right now,” Jake said. He stood up and looked his roommate in the eye. “I made the wrong choice. I should’ve come in from the west.”

“You couldn’t have known that.” Sammy put his hand on Jake’s shoulder.

“Hang in there, Jake. Hang in.” Jake nodded. He would try. But it was becoming more and more difficult, and he was getting so damned tired.